The women’s golf team headed into the Aggie Invitation with momentum after finishing second overall in the Wyoming Cowgirl Desert Intercollegiate. That momentum came to a screeching halt once the Highlanders reached Las Cruces, NM.
Riverside participated in The Aggie Invitational from Oct. 8-10. Riverside finished the first round with a collective score of 304, which placed them in 12th. On Tuesday, UCR struggled to keep up with the rest of the competition and shot one of the worst scores of the day. The Highlanders finished the round with a 315 score which was the fourth-worst round shot by any team in the tournament. Riverside was able to bounce back in the final day with a 306 round score to finish 14th out of 16 teams in the tournament.
Their highest finisher on the team was once again senior Jakeishya Le, who finished tied for seventh place in the tournament with a 218 final score. Le was also able to shoot one under par in the first and third rounds, and was tied for third overall with an average score of one under par on Par Threes.
Sophomore Ping Huang and junior Hailey White swapped places in the standings from the last tournament with White finishing second-best this time around and Huang third. White finished tied for 47th place with a score of 231 while Huang finished tied for 59th with a final score of 235.
In the Wyoming Cowgirl Desert Intercollegiate every player on the team finished within 10 strokes of the player who finished ahead of them but in the Aggie Invitational the Highlanders were unable to keep up with Le who finished 13 shots ahead of second-place White. The lack of consistency from top to bottom hurt Riverside’s performance.
Head Coach Mary Ritchie who had originally predicted a one-two-three finish for her girls left Las Cruces with a different point of view. Ritchie told gohighlanders.com, “Sometimes great outcomes take longer than we want, but that’s when we need to dig in deeper and really trust that our process will produce.”
UCR’s next tournament will be the Las Vegas Collegiate Showdown which will take place on Oct. 21.
